1. Field
The disclosure relates to a method, apparatus, system, and article of manufacture for generating device specific requests.
2. Background
The Common Information Model (CIM) is an industry standard specification to allow for the interchange of management information in a network environment including devices from different vendors, where the network may include heterogenous as well as homogeneous devices. The CIM schema specifies a set of classes, including methods and objects, that management programs call to obtain information and perform management operations with respect to devices in the network. Each vendor of a network device that is capable of interfacing in a CIM environment may provide a set of device specific APIs that implement the CIM classes. A vendor would provide a CIM Provider, which is a program module that maps CIM APIs or methods, as defined by the industry standard CIM model, to device specific APIs that may implement the functionality of a defined CIM API for the specific device. The term “CIM API” as used herein refers to any method, interface or function that is called to perform an operation defined within the CIM management schema.
The CIM schemas define a common set of models and semantics for the management of devices. Applications can be programmed against a known, consistent set of models. For programming such applications, there is a continued need in the art to provide device vendors improved techniques to develop CIMs that convert device independent CIM requests to device specific requests for managed devices.